The Only Thing the Strzok Hearing Proved Was that the Legislative Branch Isn’t Functioning
It would be difficult to argue that what passed as a congressional hearing this week actually shed much public light on any “wrongdoing” in launching the all-things-Russia investigation in the summer of 2016; by now, anyone who cares knows the general outline of the-agent-who-would-hate-Trump (and Hillary).
But, more precisely, that hearing reflected tons about what is wrong in Congress.
The 10-hour hearing was a blistering attack on highly criticized FBI agent Peter Strzok, whose ill-thought personal anti-Trump tweets with his friend and lover Lisa Page, a former Justice Department official that showed off the worst of personal insults and the best of political spin.
On the issue at hand, by the end of the day, we knew that Strzok had screwed up by allowing himself to show at least the perception of anti-Trump bias. We also knew that there were no real actions that Strzok had taken that showed a lean–the true test of bias, since Strzok also had offered anti-Hillary Clinton tweets. All of this is what we already knew or could have known from the recent FBI Inspector General report on the same material resulting in a 600-page report detailing all of it.
Strzok himself came across as a concerned citizen stupidly sharing personal opinions with a friend on his own phone and on his FBI-issued phone, not thinking that public knowledge of his tweets would look bad enough for Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III to kick him off the Russia investigation for untoward perception about an investigator.
Ten hours of vituperative hearings, and that’s the takeaway: While there were attempts to link various parts and pieces into a narrative that challenges the legitimacy of the Mueller probe, legally, this hearing did nothing.
Indeed, it whetted the appetite once again for some kind of report, indictment or conclusion from Mueller.
From a public-relations viewpoint, your perception is as good as any as to whether this unrelenting campaign to question the behavior of investigators by select Republican congressmen, Rudy Giuliani or the president himself is an effective means of argument.
For me, the hearings showed one thing only: This Congress is completely dysfunctional.
Congress is unable to focus on what is a core problem, unable to speak across partisan lines, unable to hone practical results that help anyone other than their party re-election efforts.
Normally reasonable congressmen, elected to run the government, are way more interested in the sizzle and the show than they are at getting the actual information central to the investigation.
After all, just yesterday—hours before Trump is to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin—Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod J. Rosenstein announced another set of indictments against 12 Russian intelligence officers, though he said none of that evidence showed any coordination with Americans.
In any event, Representatives Trey Gowdy III (R-S.C.), Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Robert Goodlatte (R-Va.) already have looked at all the relevant documents, and their staffs had talked privately with Strzok. They have battled with FBI director Christopher Wray and Deputy Atty. Gen. Robert Rosenstein about what can and cannot be made public—although the White House apparently yesterday ordered wider access in Congress to the same documents.
Congress is unable to focus on what is a core problem, unable to speak across partisan lines, unable to hone practical results that help anyone other than their party re-election efforts.
As Strzok himself asked repeatedly, where were the questions from Congress about the actual central questions here, about whether Russians had tried to work with Trump associates to influence the election?
As the day wore on, individual Republican whines grew louder, more personal, more offensive—but not helpful to the actual misbehavior at hand. Democrats simply brought up other topics that the committees present had refused to discuss. In all, the hearings showed that there is room only for partisan cheerleading without particular substance.
Gowdy, Jordan and Goodlatte did their best to try to connect various odd historic dots about who spoke to whom when, but even at their prosecutorial best, it was difficult to escape the obvious conclusion that this was a public show designed to defend Trump in the Mueller investigation, and not the oversight probe it purported to be.
Personally, I was disappointed by the often respectable Gowdy’s shortness and sarcasm, surprised at Jordan’s persistence at a time when he himself faces challenges over whether he reported sexual assaults as a wrestling coach and offended by Goodlatte’s apparent disregard for anything that might pass as orderly rules. That the hearing was the subject of late-night comics who found plenty to poke fun at should surprise no one.
The hearing was a series of self-serving speeches by all participating and, in some specific cases, embarrassing depictions of a Washington out of touch with the country’s needs.
This hearing, for which Strzok himself had volunteered to testify despite a subpoena, neither moved us as a country toward better defense against any continuing influence attempts in the November elections nor shed any additional information about what happened. It did show that the FBI has agents who may make personal mistakes—but who are identified and removed by the FBI itself.
The hearing neither undercut the legitimacy of the overall Russia investigation nor even on an otherwise professional FBI agent who screwed up by acting in hubris.
What it did accomplish was to paint a law-and-order government that does not believe in law and order when it may point to its own lawlessness.